slat1040:I am all for making schools more secure (windows, locks, controlling entrance...etc.) But given that a centerpiece of their security plan is arming Staff and Volunteers, I cringe. Having been a teacher and knowing the type of staff and others that would junp at the chance to volunteer, they would be the ones I would worry the most about!

But the teacher/staffer has to pass a background check to get the job teaching children in the first place (and I imagine Suzy Homemaker doesn't want "volunteers with guns" around her kids if they haven't passed one as well), making passing that check a de facto requirement to get a "teachers' gun". The NRA would be pissed if they knew what kinds of gun-grabbing second-amendment restrictions the NRA was cooking up.

It is interesting how quick and effective the anti-gun folks are at finding errors with NRA statements while being completely incapable of recognizing that lies, cherry-picking statistics, and appeals to emotion are literally the only thing their side does.

Giltric:neversubmit: fuhfuhfuh: Both sides of the current gun debate seem to enjoy resorting to appeals to emotion, slippery slopes and outright fabrications to try to defend their positions. Doesn't make either side right, or make either side look like they are anything but knee-jerk reactionaries.

Which side has a body count?

The side with all the gun free zones that people keep getting murdered in because they are not allowed to defend themselves with equal force.

Mrtraveler01:iheartscotch: Sooooooo, when does the NRA get preferred status, like ACORN got?

/ it's not wrong when we do it!

How retro!

What does "preferred status" mean anyway?

Who knows what "prefered status" means.

Both sides are making some really idiotic statements. In the middle are law-abiding citizens. The "omg, highpowered assault rifle" crowd are just grossly misinformed. Meanwhile, gun sales haven't ever been higher.

If you guys what sensible, intelligent, bi- paritizan reforms on guns; the president should issue a pledge to not take away guns from law-abiding citizens and have any democrat that wants append their name to the pledge.

Yeah, that's what gets me. It doesn't make sense for them to lie about it. If they really wanted to cite a real example of a school shooting where someone killed other people, it's not like it's never happened before. I just don't get what they hoped to gain by making shiat up.

It's almost - almost - like they lie continually or, in fact, might operate completely within a sort of enclosed figurative chamber where anything they say or do must foist an ideology that is dependent - intimately and utterly - upon prevarication.

Bravo Two:Antimatter: Further discussion on this topic is pointless: the guns rights folks won. The occasional violent robbery, massacre, rape or murder is just the price we are going to have to accept.

Guns cause rape and violent robbery? Wat?

Rapists and robbers armed with firearms are a lot harder to stop than a rapist or robber armed with a knife or some other non-projectile. Just like it's a lot easier for some lunatic to kill 30 children with assorted firearms than it is for him to kill that many kids with a knife.

But making it harder for criminals and psychopaths to buy guns (or making it easier to trace the guns they do get ahold of), if it means slightly inconveniencing hobbyists? THAT'S ANTI AMERICAN YOU COMMIE.

I know it's fun for everyone to get all worked up but lets take a look at this in context. The part of the text where the Hastings example was used was discussing vulnerabilities of interior windows and discussing different options on how to make them safer. It wasn't used to justify adding guns or arming anyone. Second, as Mother Jones did point out, the footnote referred to two different incidents. It's highly likely that the author got confused about the two instances and incorrectly mixed them up. So what does that mean? That the NRA was making up stories to push hardening of doors and windows? Does that really make any sense? It's a stupid error and one that reflects very poorly on the NRA, but it's hardly a conspiracy to sell more guns. Get over yourselves, people.

Fair enough, but MoJo was nice enough to link to their source. What was I saying about an echo chamber?

Using Mother Jones as a source is like using Fox & Friends as a source. They may be right about any given fact. They may link to factual support. But they're still an echo chamber. So it isn't really a good thread to support your opposition to echo chambers.

arguments about what precisely to do about gun control aside, i can not in any world see how making schools armored fortresses with armed guards is in any way, shape or form a rational response to school shootings

arentol:It is interesting how quick and effective the anti-gun folks are at finding errors with NRA statements while being completely incapable of recognizing that lies, cherry-picking statistics, and appeals to emotion are literally the only thing their side does.

The hypocrisy of it all is beyond ridiculous.

What "anti-gun folks"? I haven't heard from that small group of people. I didn't know there were any, to be honest.

All you have to do is link an article from a credible news agency showing that there was, in fact, a massacre at Hastings Middle School in Minnesota in 2010. Then you'll have ample grounds to criticize the source.

"However, Hutchinson also noted that no school should be forced to hire a school resource officer (sworn police officer(s) who work in school districts) or train a member of the faculty or staff on how to use a firearm. The bulk of the<a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.nraschoolshield.com/"> 225-page report expands the concepts of how to deter, detect, delay and respond to a threat like a shooter or shooting."

While the outcome of the action didn't match facts, the point still stands that the full length windows beside a door ARE a safety risk. The kid DID break through the glass and unlock the door, even if he didn't shoot anyone that still shows a major risk to safety. Locking to door and bunkering down would do nothing but make you easier bait for ANY attacker, gun, knife, bow and arrow, whatever.

If anything the facts make the safety risk even higher than stated in the NRA article as the kid didn't shoot through it, just used the gun to break it. So it's not as if an attacker would even need a gun to get through.

Antimatter:Further discussion on this topic is pointless: the guns rights folks won. The occasional violent robbery, massacre, rape or murder is just the price we are going to have to accept.

This is the part I'd love to see all gun nuts just flat out say. There's undeniable proof that guns cause more homicides and suicides, and removing guns from the equation greatly diminishes both. I would like the gun nuts and the NRA just say that their hobby greatly affects the death toll in their country, but they're okay with it. I'd hate their opinion, but I'd respect it more than this hiding behind the Constitution BS.

NRA doesn't have a dog in that fight. FTA, it was god who prevented it, not the officer who tackled the kid, or maybe the fact that the kid didn't really want to shoot anyone. remember, god is in control, or something like that.

Bravo Two:Antimatter: Further discussion on this topic is pointless: the guns rights folks won. The occasional violent robbery, massacre, rape or murder is just the price we are going to have to accept.

Guns cause rape and violent robbery? Wat?

Bravo wants bad people to stop being bad, but Bravo, likely a liberal, has no problem solving skills and lacks the vocabulary to express Bravo's desires. So, Bravo cites things that Bravo has been told bad people use when they do bad things: guns, knives, posturing, and sluts. Bravo wants those gone. When they're gone, bad people have no alternative; they must now be good people.

Giblet:Bravo wants bad people to stop being bad, but Bravo, likely a liberal, has no problem solving skills and lacks the vocabulary to express Bravo's desires. So, Bravo cites things that Bravo has been told bad people use when they do bad things: guns, knives, posturing, and sluts. Bravo wants those gone. When they're gone, bad people have no alternative; they must now be good people.

FTFA:For example, in 2010 a 16-year-old attacker killed six people hiding in a locked classroom in Hastings Middle School in Minnesota by shooting and subsequently stepping through a tempered glass window that ran vertically alongside the classroom door. Horrifying-except it never happened.

And later in TFA: It's possible that the episode in question may have been a mix-up; its footnote cites a news story covering both the incident at Hastings Middle School and the massacre at Red Lake Senior High School five years prior, in which a teen assailant killed seven and injured five before committing suicide. But whatever the case, the bad info shows that the NRA is unreliable when it comes to assessing mass gun violence.

It never happened, except that it did happen, just somewhere else, and with more dead and injured. By conflating two actual events, the NRA is engaging in fear and fantasy, the 2nd amendment is automatically expunged, and everyone at the NRA has to send an apology letter to James Brady.

You know, I was hoping we'd get some real mental health reforms out of this whole national conversation... but we're talking about guns again. Blaming inanimate objects like superstitious natives. Using terms like "armor-piercing rounds" and "high-capacity clips" without any idea or quantifiable measure of what those things are.

So basically, we're back to where we were in 1999, when we had assault weapons bans in several places (well, the whole nation), which ultimately did nothing to stop the guys at Columbine.

All civilian-owned firearms (registered and unregistered) vanish overnight, along with the capabilities to manufacture or import more from other sources.

What does the remainder of the year look like...

- Dramatic decrease in the number of homicides (homicides involving other weapons increase slightly)- Decrease in the number of robberies and assaults- Increase in the number of crime victims fighting their attackers- Small percentage of the population forced to buy meat- Small percentage of the population forced to find other hobbies (e.g. archery)- Gun dealers, manufacturers and factory works forced to seek new employment- Gun nuts forced to fixate on cars, watches, knives and other "macho" artifacts

Oh yeah...

- U.S. government uses its military to enslave its citizens as socialist workers, ensuring the demise of the U.S. economy at a time when most communist and socialist countries are beginning to embrace some form of capitalism (ha ha)

Again, just a thought experiment to consider what guns do for us.

I ultimately believe people should have the right to own guns, and think most proposed gun-control legislation is window dressing. But I also think the U.S. has some serious issues, and multiple murders are a symptom, not the problem.

All civilian-owned firearms (registered and unregistered) vanish overnight, along with the capabilities to manufacture or import more from other sources.

What does the remainder of the year look like...

- Dramatic decrease in the number of homicides (homicides involving other weapons increase slightly)- Decrease in the number of robberies and assaults- Increase in the number of crime victims fighting their attackers- Small percentage of the population forced to buy meat- Small percentage of the population forced to find other hobbies (e.g. archery)- Gun dealers, manufacturers and factory works forced to seek new employment- Gun nuts forced to fixate on cars, watches, knives and other "macho" artifacts

Oh yeah...

- U.S. government uses its military to enslave its citizens as socialist workers, ensuring the demise of the U.S. economy at a time when most communist and socialist countries are beginning to embrace some form of capitalism (ha ha)

Again, just a thought experiment to consider what guns do for us.

I ultimately believe people should have the right to own guns, and think most proposed gun-control legislation is window dressing. But I also think the U.S. has some serious issues, and multiple murders are a symptom, not the problem.

maxx2112:FTFA: For example, in 2010 a 16-year-old attacker killed six people hiding in a locked classroom in Hastings Middle School in Minnesota by shooting and subsequently stepping through a tempered glass window that ran vertically alongside the classroom door. Horrifying-except it never happened.

And later in TFA: It's possible that the episode in question may have been a mix-up; its footnote cites a news story covering both the incident at Hastings Middle School and the massacre at Red Lake Senior High School five years prior, in which a teen assailant killed seven and injured five before committing suicide. But whatever the case, the bad info shows that the NRA is unreliable when it comes to assessing mass gun violence.

It never happened, except that it did happen, just somewhere else, and with more dead and injured. By conflating two actual events, the NRA is engaging in fear and fantasy, the 2nd amendment is automatically expunged, and everyone at the NRA has to send an apology letter to James Brady.

I guess it would be nice if the NRA did its own homework before they made this report.

fuhfuhfuh:Giltric: neversubmit: fuhfuhfuh: Both sides of the current gun debate seem to enjoy resorting to appeals to emotion, slippery slopes and outright fabrications to try to defend their positions. Doesn't make either side right, or make either side look like they are anything but knee-jerk reactionaries.

Which side has a body count?

The side with all the gun free zones that people keep getting murdered in because they are not allowed to defend themselves with equal force.

Thank you both for proving my point so well.

Logic and rational discussion have no place here. Did you wander onto the wrong website? Perhaps I can direct you somewhere else on the internet....Hmmm. Not finding anywhere with logical or rational discussion online.